Euro adoption

On 23 July 2014 the General Affairs Council of Ministers of the European Union adopted the final decision on Lithuania’s membership of the euro area from 1 January 2015. From this date Lithuania became the 19th full-fledged member of the euro area, which will start using the euro as the single currency of the European Union.

12/06/2015

Bank customers hold most of their funds, deposited before the euro adoption, on accounts

The assets and deposits of the banking sector contracted in the first quarter of this year due to the euro adoption-related developments. The euro adoption also reduced banks’ income from services and commissions, while the moderate profit growth in the sector was basically driven by technical reasons. The expansion of the loan portfolio was moderate...

The new 20 euro banknote was presented to cash handlers at the Bank of Lithuania

The new 20 euro banknote and its innovative security features were presented at the Bank of Lithuania on Tuesday, 5 May. The new 20 euro banknotes, from the “Europa” series, will be put into circulation across the euro area on 25 November 2015 and will circulate together with the current banknotes of the first series.

From 1 January of this year until 1 March, commercial banks, Lithuania Post, the Bank of Lithuania and some credit unions exchanged, free of charge, litas cash in the value of 2.8 billion (EUR 0.81 billion) and performed more than 1.2 million exchange operations. When exchange will end at the post offices and credit unions, litas will be exchanged into euro at commercial banks and the Bank of Lithuania...

Public survey: after the euro adoption, the population’s support for the single currency neared 70 per cent

According to the data of a representative public survey conducted at the end of January–beginning of February, 68 per cent of Lithuania’s residents assess the euro adoption either positively or very positively. Compared to December of last year, support for the euro increased by 8 percentage points...

ECB launches online game related to the security features of the new €20 banknote

The new €20 banknote will be unveiled by Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank (ECB), at its new headquarters on 24 February 2015. To raise awareness of four of the security features of the new banknote, in particular the novel “portrait window”, the ECB is launching an online game called “Tetris® new €20”.

The euro has today become the sole legal tender in Lithuania, after two weeks in which payments could also be made in litas, with change being given in euros. This brings to a close many months of preparation by the Lithuanian authorities with support from the Eurosystem as well as the European Commission...

On Friday, 9 January, the amount of euro in circulation in the country exceeded the amount of litas According to the Bank of Lithuania data, on Friday, euro amounted to 50.4 per cent, while litas — 49.6 per cent of all cash in circulation. The euro began to dominate in circulation a day earlier than the same happened in Latvia and Estonia.

The euro adoption as of 1 January 2015 was positively or mostly positively assessed in December by almost two thirds — 60 per cent of respondents, as indicated in the representative public survey conducted in December, right before the euro adoption. Over a month, from November to December, the share of people positively assessing the euro grew by 7 p.p.

Nearly half a hundred thousand people at the Euro Exhibition in Vilnius were introduced to the new money

In over slightly more than 2 months, 46 thousand visitors from all over Lithuania visited the Euro Exhibition, which was open at the National Museum Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania. It was arranged with a view to introducing in advance the population to the new currency.